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Cartridge Mounting Hardware

I recently upgraded my tonearm to the Clearaudio Universal. This is a great arm and worth tweaking and experimenting a bit to get the best out of it. My cartridge – Concerto V2 (7 gr.) – came with several sets of cartridge mounting bolts: 5 mm nylon and aluminum flathead screws, and 8 mm stainless hex bolts. No nuts since my cartridge is tapped for the bolt threads. For years I've been using stainless bolts. With those I use a 49 gr. stainless counterweight and it sits nearly as close as it can go to the fulcrum when VTA is dialed in. When I play the Hi Fi News test record the resonant frequency of the arm is more or less at ~10 Hz as far as I can tell.

Conventional wisdom – AFAIK – says that's all good. 

I recently saw a Clearaudio photo of my arm with another one of their cartridges in the line (also 7 gr.) and it's mounted with the nylon screws. That got me to thinking about trying it, and maybe trying the aluminum ones too. With the nylon screws I can no longer use the 49 gr. stainless counterweight, and have to change to the aluminum 31.5 gr. counterweight, but that sits farther out away from the tonearm fulcrum (although it looks cooler, IMO). I'm trying that now. With the test record the tonearm resonant frequency is still right around 10 Hz. I'm playing music now and don't notice a difference, but my aural memory for such things sucks, so I have to live with it for a bit, and then revert to see how I feel. This weekend I'll play some records I use to test out setup changes and see if I hear anything for better or worse.

So that makes me wonder what others know and experience about cartridge mounting hardware (and techniques). What's your wisdom on the matter?
dwette
simao's avatar
simao
1,839 posts
 
Aural memory is like gustatory memory: capricious, inconsistent, and unreliable. Much like my college dating history.

If you don't notice a sonic difference, then don't worry about it. Listen to the music, not the system.
Anyhow, my cartridge mounting stuff is a
  • Dr. Feikert's protractor
  • Analogue Productions Test LP
  • Shure VTF scale
  • homemade oscilloscope for azimuth
  • needlenose pliers
simao's avatar
simao
1,839 posts
 
And, as @folkfreak points out, never over-tighten!
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,985 posts
 
I don't know if it's still in production (it's not on their website), but Rega was at one time making a cartridge bolt torque wrench.
dwette OP
207 posts
 
Thanks for the tips about over-tightening. I don't think that's ever been a problem for me in the 4+ decades I've been playing records. However, that analogmagik torque-wrench is intriguing. Given that my TT/arm/cartridge are close to $15k it may be a small price to pay for getting things as dialed in as possible. There's always Valentine's Day coming up. :)

FWIW: I use the Clearaudio protractor (essentially Löfgren A and B). I have used B in the past but am using A now, mostly because I play a lot of classical music. I would love to have a table with two arms: for jazz and classical. 
vasaudio
34 posts
 
If you are interesting in another upgrade, I can upgrade the tonearm wire for a smoother, warm sound. Great for vocals.
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